THE JOURNAL

Your Home Is The Road

Putting this next season of my life into words feels nearly impossible.

I have been dreaming of this exact moment for so long, and to have it here, happening, and in process is the most incredulous thing to me. It truly leaves me in awe and in somewhat of a state of disbelief.

Such is the feeling, perhaps, of realized dreams.

I have been on the road for 7 days. Which is the average length of most of my travels. The longest I’ve ever been away from Virginia, my home state, was during The Wild + Wonderful American Road Trip this past Summer, which was an adventure lasting 59 days through 30 states.

I have travelled extensively throughout my lifetime, visiting 44 of the 50 states in America and 9 other countries besides. I am so fortunate in that, I realize. But it is my life’s passion. I give up and do without a lot of things so that I can go as much as I do. (You can read a little bit more about that here in this post if you like)

I have been wanting to do something like this for a number of years.

But part of me was always waiting for either a particular place to speak to me more than most, a job to move for, or (most of all I think) a person to do it with. I thrive on being alone and my solitude is a huge part of me, and has been a significant choice in my life these last few years. But an adventure of this sort felt so daunting alone. Especially financially. Not just relationally.

But I came to the point where I was tired of waiting. I felt like I was waiting for something that would never come. And I realized I could very well be waiting for forever and for a thing that I might never find if I stayed put. There would never be an easy time to leave my family. Never a time that “made sense”.

Despite my extensive travels, I have never lived anywhere other than Virginia. And for some reason it feels important for me to do this. I say for some reason, but I know the reasons. Many of them anyway, and I know there are a great deal more to be yet discovered. Outside of the extensive explanations and reasons that I could give, what it comes down to is that I needed to do this for myself. I think much of my life I have done things for other people, something I only fault myself for, if there is fault to find in that at all. I have stayed and done things based on the desires and wishes of others for much of my life and I need to learn the safety and freedom both that can be found in boundaries and space.

I do not know what the year will hold for me. Or when I will return to Virginia, though I do know I will return. Indeed much of the next few weeks and even days are a mystery to me.

But I think the chance to place trust in people, and entities outside of myself, and of course learning to trust myself as well in new ways, is a thing I need to do. I want to learn new things, meet new people, and have experiences that will define my story and thought process in ways I am challenged by. And I want to go to new places.

Because my favorite place to be is somewhere I’ve never been.

I was talking with a friend one evening, one week into The Wild + Wonderful American Road Trip over the Summer (the trip that solidified the possibility for this one and made me feel that this dream really was doable) and I was in a state of elation.

I was expressing this to a friend, telling them about the first few days of being on the road and how it felt. I was lying in a tent next to my sleeping brother and watching the light of the moon kiss the rippling Buffalo River in the Ozark mountains of Arkansas.A place that I had all but written off as a drive-through state and was the first that captured me wildly and incredibly by surprise. I was head over heels for the greenery of the forests and mountains and it injected a kind of high into my veins that I quickly became addicted to. The high of being on the road. How I wanted to just keep going, to never return. As I was expressing my contentment to my friend, they texted this one small sentence back, and the little blue bubble summed up so simply what I was feeling:

”Why would you? Your home is the road kid.”

That is the feeling that I had nearly every single day of that two month trip. Of course there were hard times. Of course there were situations that led to frustration and discomfort.But I did not want to come home. And I think that’s a testiment to there being something out here that I need to do. Someone, someones, I need to meet. Things I need to experience.

That is how I feel now. Amidst the exhaustion and the sleep deprivation of this first week, and the harried activities and expensive car repairs… I have a deeper feeling of unshakable joy.